Mark Brown | Andrew Kelley Photography

Monte Vista

Roosting Sandhill Crane (Img# 100328_1006145)

These are the best images from a quick trip to the Monte Vista NWR at the very end of March with my dad and our photographic friends, Mark and Claudia Brown. Conditions were not quite as good as last year (we were a little late for the peak of the crane migration), but we still had plenty to shoot. The image at the top of this post is easily my favorite from the trip. It is unusual to get this close to a roosting crane, let alone in such great light. Since I couldn’t get a direct sun angle without trespassing, I picked an angle where the sidelight defined the bird’s feathers. Fortunately, the bird was oblivious to me, giving me plenty of time to work into a good shooting position.

Here are some other images from the trip. (This min-gallery may look a little funny if you’re reading this with an RSS reader. Sorry.) Click on a thumbnail for a larger view.

Note: I posted some landscape shots from the same trip here and here.

More Rocky Mountain Arsenal Mule Deer

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Mule Deer Head Shot I

I was fortunate to spend last Sunday morning shooting at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal NWR with Mark and Claudia Brown. We were hoping to find the huge mule deer buck I saw the week before. We couldn’t find him, but still came away with a couple of nice images. As is apparent from a couple of these photos, I was trying hard to make a nice deer “headshot” portrait with a clean background. In retrospect, though, I think I should have tried a little wider lens for the shoot. Nonetheless, I am pleased with these images. Getting a decent background for these deer is a perennial challenge.

Mark and Claudia were nice enough to let me try their 7D’s during the trip. Wow — the viewfinder is gorgeous, and I could sure use the 18MP for my large prints. Very tempting, though Darwin Wiggett’s post about the 7D producing soft images gives me pause. I can’t quite decide whether to get a new 7D or a used 1DMIII.

Here are a couple of additional images from the trip; click on the image for a larger version: